Sam Ruby: Sometimes the dragon wins: "I believe more strongly than ever that internationalization is an excellent litmus test as to whether or not that flashy startup has an expensive rewrite in their future."

Also in that post: "At the present time, Java is better than Python, PHP, Perl, and Ruby in handling Unicode."

Unfortunately, very true.

• In Python, the disconnect between a string and a unicode string is very frustrating. Python 3000, come save us!
• Correct me if I'm wrong but in Ruby, you need an extension (!!!) to use Unicode.
• In Common Lisp, there is some promise because a character is defined as a non-negative number. Note: Not bounded on size.